Christmas, its not sustainable but who cares!

Cultural festivals such as Christmas are often defined as excess and a waste of electric, paper, money, food etc. Everybody who celebrates Christmas over spends, over eats and it is a time of self indulgence this however is usually seen as part of the Christmas tradition. Many people celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus and the beginning of Christianity although other people just see it as a festival. It did first originate from a Greek festival Saturnalia where the whole point of the festival was to over indulgence. Over indulgence meant wealth in ancient times which may be where our over doing everything at Christmas came from. Whether people celebrate it because of religious reasons or just because it’s a widely celebrated festival I believe that we should be able to celebrate how we like. Yes, Christmas is not a very sustainable festival but for once a year people should be able to not care about sustainability and get on with enjoying life.

Since the hype of global warming and climate change the public constantly have this dread of the sea covering all land, the world becoming a big ball of gas etc. This is a good thing because with this dread of humans affecting the atmosphere makes us change our daily lives. We recycle, insulate our houses, turn off the electric, and gas where possible. Even if humans are not affecting global warming recycling is helping the atmosphere as we are slowing down our use of resources that we are quickly running out of. However with this constant thought of saving the atmosphere I think Christmas should be a time where we forget about all this and have a good time without worrying what we are doing to the atmosphere.

I think the world has already changed into a more sustainable way of life and it has not affected the celebrations of Christmas or other festivals yet. Personally I do not believe that humans are the sole cause or even affect climate change however I do think that we could run out of our resources which could bring about a panic. This would affect all of our daily lives and if we did have a mass shortage or run out it would affect our festivals including Christmas.

UK newspapers, Low budget TV programmes, how much should they be informing us?

The best selling UK newspapers occasionally touch on serious issues in their cover stories mostly relating to climate change. However cover stories for the best selling articles have to grab the audience’s attention, otherwise they wouldn’t be bought. This means that even if the story is related to serious issues such as climate change, sustainability, or political policies they could have a spin on them to sound more interesting. 

I think that serious issues should be in the media all of the time, it is their duty to inform the public of serious issues as well as trivial issues. Although I think that serious issues should be involved in the media I also think that they should be truthful. Issues such as global warming should be in the media but we do not know what is causing it or how to solve it or even if we should attempt to solve something that we do not even know if it’s a problem. This causes a problem with what to write about, how do we write about something that we know nothing about? Well as we have seen from most newspapers thy usually fill in the blanks with their own opinions. 

As well as newspapers serious issues can be brought into the media with television programmes. The most watched television programmes on ITV are x factor, coronation street and Emmerdale. Very occasionally do these programmes touch on serious issues but then again why should they? These programmes are purely for entertainment, with newspapers the public go out of their way to read up and become educated on the news where as these programmes are watched for entertainment. Although it is a duty of the media to serious issues we do not wish to be bombarded with them. Sometimes this programmes let us forget about such issues.

To what extent do you think that it is your duty as a citizen to be 'informed'? Are you informed? How do you get to be informed about serious issues? To what extent do you think that you should leave the complicated decisions up to others?

As citizens of Britain we have a duty to know about our own country and how the country is run. Being informed we are able to make our own informed decisions about our own lives, who are elected to represent us, our own ‘sustainability’ or lack thereof, and even whether we would like to act in a sustainable way. All we know is the information we hear and seek. I think that we should be informed about both sides of the sustainability argument not just preached at by a biased media, members of parliament or celebrities. Since the media rely on dramatic, scaremongering headlines to sell papers or promote programmes; MPs feel they need to sound concerned about the general worries of the public to be elected; and celebrities tend to be uneducated bandwagon travellers! I don’t have to believe them after all I’m not the son of a preacher man. If we are not informed how can we be expected to make decisions such as who to vote for in parliamentary elections, since we would not know the policies of the respective parties or candidates? For example, when you were young the news was too complicated and did not seem an interesting programme for children, so current affairs are not at the forefront of children’s minds and they would not be able to make sensible decisions, hence a minimum voting age.

I believe that I am informed in many issues of my own interest, but there are obviously issues that do not attract my attention or I hear very little about. The issues I am informed about are those that are most important to me and those I have stronger opinions in. However someday I may learn more about the other issues. I try not to be misled by things you hear on the television and I wouldn’t believe the things you hear on the radio. I’m a believer in the public knowing the truth but as we don’t actually know the truth with Global warming yet I see this isn’t possible, so why do we have the media telling us that humans are the sole cause of global warming and therefore we must live sustainably? They tell us to turn out the lights since mainstream thinking believes that global warming is man made, but I hope I think I know that the only way we can get to the truth is through un-biased private research rather than listen to the original prankster Al Gore and misguided academics as half the lies you tell ain’t true, and its not like its the end of the world as we know it.

Certain decisions of national importance should be left to others as the very nature of a democracy is to elect representatives who will make decisions on our behalf. The prime minister himself does not make all these decisions but has a cabinet and advisors to assist him on certain issues such as that of sustainability. If anyone did want to make all the decisions themselves they would be wannabe dictators which from the past experiences are never good, also the volume of decisions to be made every day would provide a bonkers workload for one person. However I think that we should be able to choose our government based on their policies as we do in this country. If you have an interest in a certain policy you should be able to vote based on that if you so chose. I still haven’t found what I am looking for as to which government I want to vote for, since I think I need to research more into parties economic and social policies. Whenever, wherever this happens will depend on my own research and investigation.

Did an inconvinenit truth affect you? do you think al gore deserved the peace prize for his work?

Short answer : No and No.

Long answer:

I do not believe that humans are the sole reason for climate change therefore it is not surprising that the inconvenient truth had no affect on my beliefs. I believe that there are many factors that change the climate and it has always been a natural cycle. The video of An Inconvenient Truth could persuade a large number of the public by teaching them that humans are the sole reason for climate change. Al Gore is a politician ‘I'm Al Gore; I used to be the next president of the United States of America.’ Therefore we know that Al Gore is a good public speaker people do believe what he is saying even though it may not be true.

 A court in London counted 9 scientific errors within his film An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore says that the sea level will rise by up to 6 metres which is true the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) have estimated that the sea level could by up to 7 metres as it has done in the past however Al Gore suggests that this will happen in the next hundred years as a result of humans effecting climate change, this is not true. The sea level could rise by that much the IPCC says but in the next several millennia. The IPCC estimate that in the most extreme case the sea level will rise by up to ‘59cm’ not 6m like Al Gore suggests in his film. Other mistakes in his film suggest that the snow on Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania will melt in the near future, pacific islands will drown, and hurricanes will get stronger due to global warming. All of these ‘facts’ are untrue there is no proof for any of them.

Secondly Al Gore did not deserve a peace prize for his film the inconvenient truth, I think it is an absolute joke that he won it. I believe this because this film is full of lies. At the very beginning of his film Al Gore says that he will present thousands of facts he however does not. He produces only a few truthful facts. I believe that since being in line to be president of the USA Al Gore still wanted to be in the lime light which is why he jumped on the bandwagon of climate change. He knows that people are concerned with this but I think less people will be inclined to believe that humans have an impact of climate change after watching this video as we know that it is built on lies to scare people into believing we are the sole cause of Global Warming.

This film has 9 scientific mistakes in it, why on earth is it being shown to school children?

Improve the 'sustainability' of your lifestyle.

I’ll admit, like many young people in Britain today I do not see myself as a sustainable person. I see a sustainable person as someone who not only cares about the planet and making it better for our future but actually does something about it. Yes, I do try to turn the lights off before I leave the house and turn the plugs off at the wall but that is more about trying to save my student loan rather than the planet.

In theory to try and aim towards a more sustainable lifestyle I could use public transport more often than I do now. I live in the North West of England if I wanted to live sustainably I could use the train to visit home from University rather than a lift. However the expenses of doing this on a student loan prevent me from putting the effort into this way of life. I do however try to walk a lot instead of using the buses but I the reasons for doing this are also to save money not to save the planet.

There are small changes that everyone could do to try and live a more sustainable way of life. Recycling instead of just throwing everything into the rubbish is a much better way of managing waste. This way we do not have to get resources straight from the ground as much as we used to we can re use the ones we have as well. It is a cheaper, cleaner, and more sustainable way of using resources. There is not much in the way of us doing this as all over Britain the councillors have provided recycle boxes that are collected right from our houses.

Living a sustainable way of life should be made a priority in young people’s lives after all it’s not just our children, according to some scientists, who will suffer due to the changing climate but it is us too. As a young adult I feel it is my duty to help save the earth by small things but for many of us this is so far into the future it is not worth worrying about.